Book review: The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life by Mark Manson

The author proffers some important lessons such as: values that are uncontrollable are bad, improving takes letting go of assumptions, and focusing on leaving a legacy can be detrimental.

The key takeaways are:

1. Avoid the constant pursuit of satisfaction because true happiness consists in only worrying about the essentials because you can only create positive experiences by experiencing the negative ones.
2. Stop believing that you are unique because it leads to being entitled without sacrifice, i.e., grandiose narcissism bases itself on the belief that you deserve special treatment, and victim narcissism takes into account I’m bad and everyone else is great, so I deserve special treatment. Both lead to complacency.
3. Accept reality as it is; don’t fall subject to self-help books promise of constant happiness and take responsibility for your own emotions and realize that dealing with negative ones is a daily struggle. Don’t avoid the problems.
4. Happiness is a science (values are hypotheses, action are experiences and results are data) which requires smart decision making based on results not fear.
5. Values are prerequisite to happiness and the ones you fight for define yourself.
6. Take responsibility to focus your energies on improving your life.
7. Choose how to react to life because we control our emotional response to problems.
8. Doubt your beliefs because then you’ll steadily improve over time.
9. Reduce your ego so you can improve by asking yourself what if I’m wrong, what would it mean if i was wrong, and would an error have a better or worse problem than my current problem?
10. Failure is the key to improvement; instead of worrying about it and becoming stagnant, try it again.
11. Better to do something that nothing because it leads to motivation.
12. Say no so you can say yes so you can truly stand up for one thing even though you are denying another issue.

He also goes into the 3 lessons you need to know which are: only hold values that you can control, certainty hampers growth, and don’t obsess over leaving a legacy.

All in all, it’s an astounding book that backs its statement up with studies and facts about prominent people. While it defies the self-help industry, many of those books leave you wanting something elusive that you’re missing. It’s a good, albeit tedious read at certain points, but worth the effort. Get it here.

Until my next post, why not check out my YA novels about mental illness, memoir writing, or even my Native American mystery series on Amazon, or follow me on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Goodreads, LinkedIn, Bookbub , BookSprout, or AllAuthor.